LEAD Action News vol 1 no 1 Feb 1993ISSN 1324-6011
Incorporating Lead Aware Times ( ISSN 1440-4966) and Lead Advisory Service News ( ISSN 1440-0561)
The journal of The LEAD (Lead Education and Abatement Design) Group Inc.

'The skimp dumps over there.' He indicated with a
finger the direction of the black mountains of waste that ran through
the centre of the town and dominated the skyline. 'They set hard a
couple of years ago, so we stopped getting that black dust on everything
with the wind. Now the unions are weak. The companies been moving in
trucks and hauling it away. You remember how big they was?' John stared.
The dumps did look altered.

'The old ones they're taking away. But if you look
over the side, they're building a new one.' There was another mountain,
rising almost as high as the first. New gunmetal-coloured sand,
glittering and dull.

'The dust is worse now than it was in the old days.
The lead gets into the tank water. '

'Lead?'

'Mrs Keenan down the road, the old woman although she wasn't that old
then if you remembered her, she kept on blowing the fuse in her
electric jug. Every month or two she had to get a new fuse. Once she had
enough of that so she brought in an electrician to look at it. He looked
at it and said, "You're using rainwater eh." "How did you
know?" She asked. "It's the best water. Come out of the sky,
got nothing in it, no problems." "Problem is the dumps,"
says the electrician. "I's not supposed to say it because nobody's proved
it yet and the mining companies, they all say it can't happen. Healthy
enough so babies can live on it, they don't need mother's milk, they
reckon. But take it from me Missus since those dumps been shifted and
those trucks been working, anybody who uses rainwater in their electric jug gets trouble." "How
does that work?" asks the old woman. So he holds up the core, where it's all corroded. "See
that," He says, "if you take that down and get it analysed I'd
take a bet they'd say it's lead." "They can't do that, lead's
poison," she says. "Don't get angry with me, I didn't put it
there," the electrician reckons. Mrs Keenan, she went up and down
the street telling everyone, but they don't care. All scared of losing their jobs. For me, it don't matter, I
retire in two years. But they got everything on time payment. They
can't afford it. When she come up to me she looked real shitty,
"They can't do that, it's not legal." She waves this piece of
paper at me. "They're doin' it though, and there's not much you can
do about it." She always was a bit funny, Used the tank water
because she doesn't like fluoride only now the tap water is healthier. '

While the old man was speaking John ran his eye
along the top of the dump. Trucks moving slowly along the top of the
skimps, and dust.

(pages 355-357)

Rae
Desmond Jones was born in Broken Hill in 1941, and left there in his mid
teens. The Lemon Tree is his first novel, after 3 books of poems and one
of short stories. He has been involved with a number of urban
environmental issues